Overweight despite its wooden construction, at one stage 12 LaGG-3s were being completed daily and 6,528 had been built when factory 31 in Tbilisi switched to Yak-3 production in 1944.The prototype of the LaGG-3, I-301, was designed by Semyon A. Lavochkin, Vladimir P. Gorbunov and Mikhail I. Gudkov. It was designated LaGG-3 in serial production. Its airframe was almost completely made of timber, with crucial parts processed with Bakelite lacquer. This novel wood-laminate construction was more durable than regular timber, was incombustible, and didn’t rot.

It was, however, much heavier and pilots joked that rather than being an acronym of the designers' names (Lavochkin, Gorbunov, and Gudkov) "LaGG" stood for lakirovanny garantirovanny grob ("(the) varnished guaranteed coffin" - лакированный гарантированный гроб) due to its performance relative to its opponent's aircraft at the time of its introduction (later variants were more capable).

The full wooden wing (with plywood surfaces) was analogous to that of the Yak-1. The only difference was that the LaGG’s wings were built in two sections. The fuselage was the same as the MiG-3's. But the LaGG-3’s armament was considered formidable. It consisted of a large-calibre (12.7 mm) UBK machine gun, which was installed between the "V" of the cylinders of the engine and two synchronized ShKAS machine guns.

Consequently the weight of fire was 2.65 kg/s, making the LaGG superior to all serial Soviet fighters, as well as the 1941 version of the Messerschmitt Bf 109. The MiG-3, which shared exactly the same weapons fit was (and is) considered extremely under-gunned[citation needed] compared with the Yak-1, which had a 20 mm cannon and two 7.62 mm machine guns, and even the later versions of the Polikarpov I-16, which had two cannon and two machine guns.

See a side view of the machine. It shows the Mustang (A36 Apache) and Spitfire effects.Do you see....?